Lockdown Should Open up Our Minds

12 The Sunday Times May 3, 2020 COMMENT ESTABLISHED 1822 Justine McCarthy A way out of virus restrictions Lockdown should — but not electoral stalemate open up our minds e wrote last Sunday that, for the public has been increased from with Covid-19 largely 2km to 5km, but unwinding the lockdown under control, the task for proper will not begin until May 18. Further the government was two- easing of restrictions will take place at fold: unwinding the three-weekly intervals up until August 10. restrictions that have put But it is clear from the conditions Gravity of coronavirus crisis gives us a chance to challenge the status quo the economy into cold attached to the various activities as they storage and managing are unwound that the country will be t was while in quarantine at his childhood biggest industrialised countries should hold pronouncement in Nicaragua that the disease is Wexpectations as to how that can be operating in a completely different world, home during a bubonic plague lockdown the greatest sway. For most of the past century, “a sign from God”. None of this means women achieved. On Friday, Leo Varadkar met both economically and socially. While of his Cambridge college that, according those countries have ruled the roost, from automatically make the best rulers. It just that challenge. There will be arguments there are promising developments on the to legend, Isaac Newton was struck — Davos to the UN security council, Nato to the means men do not. That may seem a blindingly about the details that emerged from the testing of drugs to treat Covid-19, there is metaphorically, at least — by a falling apple G8, reducing the rest of the world to the role of obvious conclusion, but it is one to which the taoiseach’s presentation, but what cannot much uncertainty about the prospects for in his family’s orchard. Thus did he devise impotent spectators. As we watch with sadness world has remained blind for too long. In our his law of universal gravitation, which while China, America, Italy, France and the UK pre-Covid patriarchal age, a man could carve a be disputed is that there now exists a clear a vaccine to combat the disease. There would provide the genesis for the buckled under the coronavirus, there has been pedestal for himself in the international power road ahead — albeit one that may contain may be one in a couple of years, or there Iindustrial revolution. In that moment of a gradual realisation that, if size matters, it’s league armed with only a sackload of a few unexpected potholes. may never be one at all. What this means normal life suspended by a terrifying plague, not in the way we have been measuring it. bombastic inanities and a mother lode of self- The taoiseach himself knows that the is that a high level of fear will remain in Newton changed the world. Smaller, less crowded, less urbanised and less entitlement. And the world has suffered for it. cabinet’s plan is likely to prove controver- significant parts of the community even Over preceding centuries, physicists had industrialised countries appear to be faring For most of us, with our limited experience sial, alluding in a television interview on after August 10 when the “new” normal been chipping away at Aristotle’s theory that better in mitigating the pandemic. This does of one pandemic, the suspension of life falling objects land the way they do because not mean that big is, therefore, bad. It means outside the front door has switched on the light Friday night to the disputes that are likely comes into being. of their inner weight. No alternative theory small has its advantages, too. of reflection. While political leaders make to erupt at a later stage. This is inevitable. For good reasons, social distancing is managed to debunk comprehensively the Even in the world’s testosterone-driven urgent decisions in the endeavour to save lives, After all, the economy, for the most part, going to become second nature for many Aristotelian consensus that had prevailed for political offices and boardrooms, it is being the majority of us have time to contemplate went into lockdown at the same time. As people and, even with enhanced testing hundreds of years quite as unequivocally as acknowledged that many countries run by how decisions being made to address the here it reopens, however, some sectors will be and contact tracing, that will lead to unim- Newton’s insight. In a time of paralysing women have managed to flatten the curve and now have the potential to improve the favoured over others, leading to resent- aginable changes in our way of life. Fear uncertainty wrought by a plague that would kill faster than others. See Angela Merkel’s future. Paradoxically, the more we don’t 25 million people, one of humankind’s most Germany, Tsai Ing-wen’s Taiwan, Jacinda know, the more we question what we thought ment and anger among business owners will have a dampening effect on consumer fundamental certainties was demolished. Not Ardern’s New Zealand, Katrín Jakobsdóttir’s we did know. who feel that they are being further disad- behaviour, with inevitable consequences only did Newton’s discovery change the world, Iceland, Sanna Marin’s Finland, Erna Solberg’s In the past, whenever an alternative code to vantaged by the schedule of reopenings. for the public finances, which are mas- it changed how the world thought. Norway and Mette Frederiksen’s Denmark. liberal capitalism was mooted and dismissed We believe that the government, for sively dependent on the taxes generated Nearly 400 years later, here we are again, Frederiksen, you may recall, was the prime by masters of the universe, meek acquiescence the most part, has made the right call. It is by spending. The budgetary implications frozen in time and beset by uncertainties. How minister who declined to sell Greenland to the persisted. The philosopher Alain de Botton long will this coronavirus hound us? How many US president Donald Trump last year. has posited that we stifle our will to question easy to underestimate the challenge that are alarming and will present the next of us will it kill? Will scientists find a safe It would be a sweeping generalisation to the status quo because we presume it faced. The daily recitation of medical government with unpalatable choices. vaccine? How long will it take to produce a conclude, on this basis, that women ought conventions must have a sound basis — even if statistics has indicated for some weeks Against that background, the discus- cure? Will there be a second wave of Covid-19, to rule the world. There are possible we are unsure what that is — because so many that we are winning the battle to suppress sion document produced by Fianna Fail and successive waves after that? How many geographical, climatic, scientific, sociological people have adhered to them for so long. Covid-19. But even as the news got better, and Fine Gael in an attempt to woo the businesses will go bust and how many jobs will and cultural reasons why some countries have “It seems implausible that our society we remained subject to the most extreme Green Party and independents into a coali- vanish? How can we survive this viral been less severely affected by Covid-19 than could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs,” he Armageddon that has turned our planet into others. What can be said is that many female said, “and, at the same time, that we would be loss of civil liberties experienced in our tion looks more deluded by the day. In this a global ghost town where wild animals prowl leaders have adopted a more cautious and alone in noticing the fact.” lifetime. This created understandable parallel universe, a country that has been the deserted streets? less economy-driven approach. Merkel is a In our pre-Covid age, migration was viewed frustration for many people and led to subject to an economic collapse not seen Yet, while we grapple with existential prime example. as “a problem” to be sequestered behind grim unrealistic expectations ahead of Mr since the Great Depression can promise doubts, our world is simultaneously witnessing The psychology employed by Solberg and walls and wire fences. Now half the world Varadkar’s announcement two days ago. billions in increased public spending while the demolition of long-accepted wisdoms Frederiksen, in choosing to speak directly to depends on the other half for its food supply, that have impeded real human progress. their countries’ children, is in stark contrast to from the migrant cherry and nectarine pickers The single most important point to maintaining taxation at current levels. Expediency has whipped off the blinkers of Trump’s “try bleach” solution, Jair Bolsonaro’s in Spain and grape pickers in California to the remember is that Covid-19 has not been The challenge is so great that it will be certitude, giving us glimpses of a better future “so what?” response when asked about Brazil’s strawberry pickers in north Co Dublin. eliminated: it has been suppressed. This a miracle if Mr Varadkar and Micheál Mar- untrammelled by the prevailing global rising death toll, and Daniel Ortega’s Even after Ireland’s banks were saved from has been achieved only because the public tin, the Fianna Fail leader, can actually orthodoxy. collapsing a decade ago, bank executives were proved exceptionally compliant when put a government together, never mind In Ireland, this has been most dramatically considered deserving of six-figure salaries asked to stay at home and take other one that lasts a full term.

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